﻿"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

George Monbiot's nuclear conversion and an ecological visualisation of the
elephant in the room that, it appears, no mainstream environmentalist, let
alone the political class, dare talk about

I met George Monbiot many years ago, during the various roads and land
campaigns of the early 1990s  not long after the security guards at the
Batheaston/Swainswick bypass used "minimum reasonable force" to bust
his foot, after which he limped from event-to-event on a crutch. As far as
nuclear power goes, George has been sitting on the fence for a while now; this
week he fell off, on the pro-nuclear side.

Banbury, Tuesday 22nd  Friday 25th March 2011.

Given his previous opposition,
George Monbiot's[1] shift towards a blithe
acceptance[2]  if not full support
 for nuclear power, in spite of the Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear
accident[3], has left many environmentalists
feeling a little betrayed; I've even had a few emails today, due to my long
history of working on energy and nuclear issues, asking me to vociferously
"take him on". I don't see the point of a personalised attack, or
what purpose it would serve to advance the debate  although it might act
as a conduit for people to vent their fear and angst at the seeming collapse of
the ecological alliance against nuclear power.

Right or wrong, George's opinions are rightly his own.
However, if he is representing "opinion" as some sort of
"fact", using his "green icon" status to lend credibility,
then that's an entirely different matter (I'm not entirely sure if he is, given
his rather diffident views on the whole nuclear issue of late). What matters
then are the facts; George is free to interpret these as he wishes. Although,
in that context, I'd expect him to apply the oft-quoted phrase from
John Maynard Keynes[4];
"When the facts change, I change my mind."

So, looking at the whole nuclear issue, what "facts"
have possibly changed to make us, or George, believe that nuclear power today
 in contrast to last week, last year, or even thirty years ago (when I
was presented with the arguments at school)  has any better chance of
solving our various ecological problems?

I'm in full writing flow at the moment. For that reason
I've been trying to avoid involvement in any "distractions"
 any work engagements, queries or debates, or writing another issue
of ecolonomics  in order to speed the completion of my
new tome. After wrestling with "the beast" (the draft of my next book
which at one point, unfinished, weighed in at a mind-numbing 285,000 words) for
many months I've finally made headway; I now have something that looks vaguely
publishable.

A few years ago another member of the Oxford eco-set, Mark Lynas, did
something similar, and has now made quite a comfortable niche for himself in
the "business" of climate change. He was following other leading
"environmentalists" who, over recent years, have embraced a more
non-confrontational viewpoint that seeks a truce with politics and industry in
order to try and create change. Stewart Brand, for example, once the darling of
the American counter-culture, has since morphed into a vendor of big solutions
to the problems of the human ecological crisis. Interestingly, following on
from last year's Channel 4 documentary, What
the Green Movement Got Wrong[5], Monbiot
criticised both Lynas and Brand for the role they played in the programme, and
their massaging of objective fact in order to make an ecological perspective
fit within the paradigm
of corporate power[6]. In reviewing the
documentary, and the content of Brand's recent "eco-pragmatist"
book[7], he made a very erudite
observation
of their roles[8] 

Brand and Lynas present themselves as heretics. But their convenient
fictions chime with the thinking of the new establishment: corporations,
think-tanks, neoliberal politicians. The true heretics are those who remind us
that neither social nor environmental progress are possible unless power is
confronted.

I've read today's article through, twice; I find myself thinking of
Ed
Murrow's incisive jibe[9] against Senator
McCarthy  "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in
ourselves". I to proceed forward the details on, with a covering note,
around the virtual networks I support. A short while later comments start to
flow back. Generally, people are not pleased. Some accuse him of "losing
the plot". At this point, rather grudgingly I must admit, I'm moved to
stop editing my book and make a more lengthy reply. The difficulty is, George
offers so much to write about.

As I look at this issue, "losing it" depends upon whether or not
you're asking the right questions in the first place. If the original
assumptions behind the debate that inspired George's volte-face were
wrong, the entire plot (not just George's, but the development of the whole
pro-nuclear environmentalist think-tank) was a lost cause before it even got
going.

I think George is framing the questions according to a set of pre-conceived
ideas about energy and the economic process that are demonstrably invalid. In
fact, I think the whole carbon/climate debate has "lost it" of late.
In part, I believe that's because the mainstream of the environment movement
can't deal with the political realities (such as the adherence to the
principles of the market in all matters of public policy) so vividly expressed
at the Copenhagen
Climate Conference[10] in 2009. For
example, Mark Lynas started his revisionist
assault on environmentalism[11] shortly
after Copenhagen concluded.

As I see it the debate over climate change, and in fact on environmentalism
in general, has become disassociated from the economics and thermodynamics of
the way society operates. Consequently the options offered, by both
environmentalists and the corporations or governments they seek to oppose, will
be flawed from the outset. All sides adopt common assumptions about the
operation of the world, the fiscal and the material economy, that  if we
look at various research studies on these topics and the trends in economic and
material flows  cannot be validated. As a result these flawed
assumptions, the "questions" being posed, or the "opinions"
being promoted, are arguably wrong.

Ultimately what this debate adheres to, seemingly on either side of the
environmental divide, is the concept of maintaining our modern, technological
civilisation; but that again is to some extent misunderstood. Technology is a
tool shaped by human creativity; literally, that's all it is. What makes
certain technologies viable or not are the economic and thermodynamic
relationships that their operation allow or inhibit. Such questions go beyond
the specific forms, functions or purposes of the technological artefact, and
are instead functions of the human ecological system from which they spring[12].

As demonstrated in the failure of leadership by the break-away group of
wealthy nations
at Copenhagen[13] (despite the clear evidence for the
need to act before
the Copenhagen conference[14] was opened), we
have a fundamental problem of process; all options to solve the carbon (or any
other problematic) issue are required to conform to the existing standards and
principles of the Post-World-War technological economy. If we look at this in
terms of the historic process of human development, that's analogous to asking
the founders of the industrial revolution to conform to the economic principles
of the Medieval economy  for example, would the modern world exist as
it does today if the laws against usury had been left intact?

In terms of developing the "next" low energy, resource efficient
economic system, such prohibitions are not going to produce a viable
alternative to today's economic process. Carbon emissions and growing resource
consumption are, for a variety of reasons demonstrated by recent economic
research, essential parts of the creation of economic growth  no new
energy and mineral resources, no growth. Consequently, no matter how much
effort we put into renewable energy, or even nuclear, there's a clear mismatch
between the capacity of the human system to maintain current consumption
levels, let alone increase them to meet the needs of the world's developing
nations.

Let's put this conundrum within another moral issue, echoing George's
observation on the need to challenge power in order to have a true resolution
to the ecological crisis: If it's a choice between power and influence but
cow-towing to conventional wisdom, or representing the best "truth"
of our situation but risking unpopularity, which should you choose?

George might have lost a lot of friends writing that article, although he's
probably gained a whole lot more, but for me that's immaterial when the
technical energy and economic questions that such fickle relationships are
based upon are, at the outset of the debate, so clearly misunderstood.

"A mystic is a person who wants to understand the
world without using science"; I purposefully threw that statement into
the draft of the new book, if only to provoke a response from those within the
environment movement who see science as a threat  when it fact it is
simply a human tool with which they could provide compelling evidence to
support their values and goals. There's absolutely nothing wrong with
mysticism; it's an important part of human culture, and one that allows us to
narrate the story of our existence in ways that resolve uncertainty and
conflict over the true nature of our lives. However, if we're going to take-on
the opponents of an ecological viewpoint of human existence, we have to engage
with science not simply as a means of taking part in the dominant media or
policy agenda, but as a means to frame that agenda by challenging some of the
central myths that are perpetuated by industry and governments.

Unfortunately such an approach no longer leads the vision that mainstream
environmentalists present. As pressure group campaigning has shifted from a
knowledge-based activity to one that dominated by media lobbying, the
environment movement has lost control of the news agenda because they are no
longer able to frame the interpretation of facts; they are continually reactive
rather than being proactive and thus cannot guide events; more problematically,
this media-friendly, popularised notion of environmentalism has become part of
the wallpaper of the media landscape, where it can be difficult to
differentiate its purposes from the other competing messages it sits alongside.
That, in a sense, and certainly in relation to the nuclear issue, is George's
problem as much as the rest of us.

The stark choices presented by environmentalism during the 1970s, between
ecological Armageddon or economic expansionism, no longer form part of the
image of environmentalism depicted in the media. Campaign groups shy away from
any position that detracts from the reassuring messages of affluence promoted,
from low-brow fashion to high-brow entertainment, across the media; preferring
instead to talk about "sustainable
consumption"[15] or "green
new deals"[16]. When such stark,
counter-culture messages are presented in the media it is often as a curio,
usually representing a pre-conceived notion of a quirky
or eccentric lifestyle[17], but stripped of
any challenging or incisive
critique of modernity[18] from a deep
ecological perspective[19].

Which brings us back to George's shift towards an acceptance of nuclear
energy in today's article 

Yes, I still loathe the liars who run the nuclear industry.
Yes, I would prefer to see the entire sector shut down, if there were harmless
alternatives. But there are no ideal solutions. Every energy technology carries
a cost; so does the absence of energy technologies.

Reading this made me think of Saint Augustine's famous prayer[20], "Give me chastity and continence,
but not yet". However, I would interpret it within the terms of
Paracelsus' maxim stated nearly five hundred years ago, "All things are
poison, and nothing is without poison; only the dose permits something not to
be poisonous."

When George speaks of the "absence" of energy technologies bearing
a cost he's entirely correct; but how do we square that with the inevitable
costs of keeping our current lifestyles when, on a whole range of indicators
other than climate change, human society is heading for ecological
collapse?[21]

What's implied in this statement is some appeal towards stasis  an
idea that society today represents the "best of all possible worlds",
and, therefore, that anything which detracts from the continued support and
enjoyment of our present day world must be an aberration. He echoes this idea
two paragraphs before, when he states 

Deep green energy production  decentralised, based on
the products of the land  is far more damaging to humanity than nuclear
meltdown.

So, what we have is a message
of conformity[22]; a plea for the
maintenance of today's perhaps imperfect system that, even with "all of
the corner-cutting that we've become quite familiar with", preserves the
trappings of our glorious civilisation... but what if that whole outlook is
in ignorance of both the ecological and the historical facts?

Let's ask some troubling questions. Let's take a broad swathe of information
on the ecological effects of human society and test George's contention that
today's world must be better than the "deep green" alternative 
and, therefore, that we must justifiably undertake certain risky measures to
preserve the material trappings of our modern way of life.

In doing this I'll not just reference George's article, but also Stewart
Brand's book which pre-dates, and prefigures, many of the points George seeks
to make. In contrast we'll look not at the political opinions of
environmentalists, but at scientific research and academic studies covering the
fields of energy resources, economics and health
physics[23] (the health impacts of
radiation). However, first we need to consider the context within which these
issues are contested  what's my interest in this?

Much of the research I carry out is a sort of
"watching brief"  being aware of developing trends, seeking out
the information and technical facts behind them, and then trying to develop
information, support services for campaign groups, and ultimately articles and
presentations that explain these to a non-technical public audience. This is
what I have always done, as an environmental campaigner from the 1980s and as a
professional consultant during the 1990s; since 2002 I've become independent of
any organisation in order to give myself greater freedom to explore and develop
new ideas. Over the last few years, at the suggestion of a number of people,
I've described the work I do as "ecological futurism"[24]. In a sense I try and see trends within
environmentalism, but also within the wider world of politics and economics,
that have a bearing on how humanity negotiates its existence within the world
that we live upon.

As part of this desire to be "ahead of the curve" I try and keep
an eye on what the opinion formers within different movements are doing. It's
for that reason that I've been keeping up with the work of Stewart Brand and
the groups that he is associated with  such as the Global Business
Network[25]. In 2009, Brand
published what he describes as an "eco-pragmatist manifesto",
entitled Whole Earth Discipline[7]. In the book he
seeks to slaughter many of the sacred cows of the green movement; urbanisation,
genetic modification, intensive farming, big technologies and, of course,
nuclear power. On the nuclear issue, Brand makes an interesting observation on
how the philosophical positions of leading environmentalists are likely to
change 

There is a category of prominent environmentalist that I
predict will increase in the coming years  the reluctant tolerators. When
they express support of nuclear, they are careful to use sentences too complex
to be quote-worthy.

If Brand's got where he is today it's by spotting trends; that certainly
fits George's expressed position, and his seeming "conversion" was
echoed around the world by the business and right-wing
media[26] as a demonstration, although
often devoid of any direct reference to his actual words, that the supporters
of nuclear power had been right all along.

In a sense, Brand's whole earth discipline is an exemplar of the need
for discipline within public communications, to manage the message of
environmentalism in order to make it acceptable for a political or business
audience. The iconoclastic themes of his book, focussing on narrow issues that
mirror the stripped-down sound-bite media culture they are designed to
interface with, are an extension of the simplified and commodified mind-set of
consumer-oriented environmentalism. During the 1990s, these changes excluded
many excellent campaigners from the grass roots of organisations, and who might
have represented "loose cannons"; and ultimately the effect was to
elevate the profiles of certain groups or individuals who fitted the
pre-conceived roles of this engineered debate  creating, like celebrity
chefs or footballers, "iconic" figures who are perceived to speak for
everyone.

Brand's statements also reflects the way in which certain people have been
co-opted by the "political-economic consensus" to reflect certain
acceptable views; and in return, they're promised illusory reforms to the
workings of the modern world to reflect a more "green" agenda. I've
seen this happening ever since environmentalism became an "issue" in
the late 1980s. For example, when I was on the board of Friends of the Earth,
great pressure was being applied to adopt a more conciliatory approach to
politics and business in return for "access" to decision-making; and
in fact, after I left, a friend resigned from the board because of such
compromises between funding sources and the message the organisation was
seeking to promote. Some groups succumbed to that process far more quickly than
others and learnt to operate their aspirations for change within it  such
as the example I gave from the speech by Duncan Green, from Oxfam, in one of my
previous editions of ecolonomics[27].

More and more, environmentalists have become well dressed talking heads in
the media, expressing opinions rather than, as was the case 20 years ago,
actually trying to live a different kind of lifestyle. That, in a sense,
has been the flaw of treating environmentalism as a kind of consumer product
 which people conspicuously consume to express lifestyle preferences,
rather than adopting as a more fundamental philosophic outlook that informs and
guides their decisions over how to live and work.

Anyway, let's get back to the heart of the issue...

George's main contention is that the damage created by
coal is worse than the damage created by nuclear power. That argument can
be assessed in many ways:

We can look at the effects of climate change on the human
population, and the role of coal-fired electricity within this trend;

We can look at the effects of nuclear power on the human
population; and, finally,

We should also test George's assumptions about our present way
of life  that "Deep green energy production... is far more damaging
to humanity than nuclear meltdown".

Coal burning has been taking place for a long time, without a doubt; but the
fact that coal is being burnt, and that coal-burning produces toxic and
globally harmful by-products, isn't the issue we should concern ourselves with.
As noted in Paracelsus' maxim earlier, the issue at the heart of whether
coal-burning is creating harm must begin with the scale upon which the
activity takes place.

There are various databases around about coal consumption today, but to make
sense what we really need is an historic database. We're primarily concerned
about carbon emissions, and usefully the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory's
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre has a database
of carbon emissions[28] that's been
researched back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in 1751. If we
graph the data for "solid fossil fuels" (which includes both coal and
lignite) we get the result shown on the left.

It's an unwelcome fact for many  I know, as I've explained the
facts in many of my presentations  but the majority of the carbon
emissions that are driving climate change are not historic;
they've occurred within the lifetimes of many of the people living today. As
the graph above shows, half of the carbon emissions from solid fossil fuel use,
and by implication the amounts burnt, have taken place since
1971. If we were under the misapprehension that the Industrial
Revolution, powered by coal, was the cause of our problems today, we can
dispatch that idea too as three-quarters of the emissions from solid fossil
fuels have taken place since 1937.

Let's widen our view and look at all fossil-fuel carbon emissions


Global emissions from all fossil fuels, 1751-2007

Source: CDIAC

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century solid fossil fuels (coal and
lignite) represented almost 100% of the carbon emissions burnt around the
globe. By 1962, at the height of the post-War boom, it fell to 50% of fossil
fuel emissions. By 1973, as we reached the First Oil
Crisis[29], it was liquid fuels that
represented almost 50% of fossil fuel emissions, and solid fuels had fallen
back to second place with around a third. The high price of oil following the
Oil Crisis drove down the use of oil, and in part led the "dash for
gas" of the 1980s; and by 1989, as China and other developing nations
industrialised, the emissions from liquids and solids drew equal once again
 representing about two-fifths of emissions each. By 2007 solids has
edged ahead; at that point solid fuels represented 39% of emissions, liquids
37%, gases 19%, and cement manufacture (included in the figures by as it's one
of the more significant energy-related sources of carbon) and gas flaring
made-up the other 5%.

What's perhaps more significant is the overall proportions of all the
emissions since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Three-quarters
of all the carbon emissions from fossil fuels, since 1751, have taken place
since 1961; half since 1981! What's really quite enlightening is that, on
the data that stretches from 1751 to 2007, a third of all emissions have taken
place since 1992, the year that the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change[30]
(UNFCCC) was signed. In other
words, over the last 20 years, the most significant achievement of the world's
political leadership in relation to climate change  since they agreed
that action on climate change was a global priority in 1992  has been
to increase global carbon emission by 50% more than had been released over the
240 year history of industrialisation before that date.

If we move away from the slogans and the noise of the present debate on
climate, and just look at the raw data about what's happening with carbon
emissions, coal is not a significant problem; or rather, to qualify that
statement, coal is no more a significant problem than the use of liquid fuels,
or other human activities that drive anthropogenic greenhouse gas
emissions.

Looked at in this way, the significance of coal per se again blends
into the other trends within anthropogenic climate change. Energy represents
around 57% of human greenhouse gas emissions; adjusting for each individual
fossil fuels that means solid fossil fuels, in 2004 (the date of the IPCC's
data), represented 21% of greenhouse gas emissions and liquids 22%.
Deforestation, methane and nitrogen oxide emissions collectively make up 39% of
emissions, and are largely created by one dominant human activity 
agriculture. For example, livestock for meat
production[32] takes up 26% of the agricultural
land area of the globe, consumes a third of all arable crops, and livestock
produces 9% of greenhouse gas emissions directly. If we look from the other end
of the equation, taking the example of a typical
Western consumer[33], food consumption is
their largest single source of greenhouse gases  representing, in carbon
equivalent terms, 35% to 40% of their total annual emissions  far more
than the coal-fired electricity they consume directly.

Agriculture is the dominant driver of both greenhouse gas emissions, but
also the destruction of the Earth's natural habitats that are able to store and
fix carbon in soils and biomass. The total amount of biomass produced each
year, representing the output of the biosphere's life systems which cycle
carbon, is called the net
primary productivity[34] (NPP). There are
various studies which examine how much of the world's NPP the human species
uses each year. One
study[35] suggests that we consume between 14%
and 26% of global NPP. More
recent research[36] puts the figure at around
24%  just over half of that figure due to human agriculture, another
two-fifths was land management, and just under a tenth was due to forest fires.
Another[37] puts the use of NPP on the land as high
as 40%. The problem is that human agriculture is only able to buffer and fix a
fraction of the carbon compared to natural habitats  and consequently
we're negating the ability of the biosphere to cleanse its own wastes.

The significance of NPP, and it's ability to cycle carbon from the
atmosphere into biomass, is more apparent if we look at a related issue 
renewable energy. There is a common fallacy promoted by
environmentalists that humans, "only use X% of the energy that Earth
receives from the Sun"  the implication being that we could
utilise a large proportion of this energy to meet our needs. It might be that
we don't utilise much renewable energy, in terms of our present conventional
energy use, but that very statement represents a critical misjudgement about
the point it seeks to make; if we were to use a large proportion of the
Earth's solar energy input, rather like the agricultural impacts issue, the
effects would be devastating to the natural environment.

Currently the world uses 467
exa-Joules (EJ) of primary energy[38]; 35% is
crude oil, 24% natural gas, 29% coal, 6% nuclear and 6% is renewable
hydro-power. Other studies, that give greater weight to collecting
data
on renewable energy production[39], put the
figure for renewable energy utilisation at 19% of global energy consumption.
The Sun powers the Earth's biosphere, delivering 5,400,000EJ of energy into the
Earth system. Therefore the use of 467EJ of conventional energy sources
represents about 0.9% of the Sun's solar input.

In reality that's not strictly a valid comparison because of the other
renewable plant-based materials the human system consumes in addition to the
"technological" sources of renewable energy. Various estimates put
the energy contained within the Earth's biomass at around 4,200EJ; if we
multiply this by the fraction of net primary productivity utilised by humans,
that adds around 1,000EJ, more than 200%, to our energy utilisation
 and almost all of that figure is renewable energy ("almost"
because we could, for example, quibble about the amounts of fossil fuel being
used in agricultural production).

If we think of the related drivers of human unsustainability  habitat
destruction and species loss, soil erosion, water depletion, eutrophication[40] of the aquatic environment, as
well as greenhouse gas emissions  then agriculture is top of the
list. It is the single most significant driver of greenhouse gas emissions,
and other agriculture-related impacts (such as deforestation) which damage the
ability of the biosphere to buffer and absorb carbon. Consequently addressing
our agricultural systems would put us a long way towards solving a great many
of the other drivers of ecological collapse (which we'll return to later),
not just the climate issue. Across all environmental media agriculture
has a much greater impact than coal; why then do certain leading
environmentalists have an obsession with coal?

One of George's justifications to support nuclear being
qualitatively better than coal-fired plants is that it releases less
radioactivity into the environment. That's an interesting issue in and of
itself because it represents a contradictory argument: if low level emissions
from coal-burning are significant, then the activities within our everyday
lives that have a higher radiological impact are also significant; but if low
level radioactivity is an issue for coal then it must be an issue for nuclear
too  ultimately it comes down the the level of the qualitative difference
in emissions (back to Paracelsus again!).

In his article George states that 

...expanding the grid to connect... to rich, distant sources
of ambient energy is also rejected by most of the greens who complained about
the blog post I wrote last week in which I argued that nuclear remains safer
than coal.

An article in Scientific American points out that the fly ash
produced by a coal-burning power plant "carries into the surrounding
environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the
same amount of energy".

George repeated this statement on the BBC's Daily
Politics[22] programme on the
17th March 

...in the normal course of their operations, per unit of
electricity that they produce, coal turns out a hundred times more radiation
than nuclear

...the waste produced by coal plants is actually more
radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly
ash emitted by a power plant  a by-product from burning coal for
electricity  carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more
radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

The article continues by stating 

In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium
content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants...The result: estimated
radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or
higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities... and when
all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher
around the coal plants.

If there's one thing I've learnt over years of research, never trust a
third-party report; always go back to the original source  not the
1978 Science article from which this article is derived, but the original
1977 research paper[43]. This states 

The maximum individual dose commitments from the model coal
plant were greater than those from the pressurized water reactor, except for
the thyroid dose, but were less than those from the boiling water reactor,
except for the bone dose. In general, however, the whole-body and all organ
doses for both the coal and nuclear plants were in the same order of
magnitude.

Not 100 times greater (two orders of magnitude), the difference between the
two different nuclear technologies and coal are within one order of
magnitude (ten times) of each other  and in fact for the effect on
the thyroid the impact of nuclear was always greater than
coal.

Comparatively, the most important variable within the model used as the
basis for this study is the amount of ash released from coal burning. In the
study it was assumed to be 1%; that's pretty typical of the electrostatic
precipitators[44] used to clean the
air emissions of power plants at that time. Move forward to today, with better
precipitators, but more importantly with the use of wet scrubbers or flue-gas
desulphurisation[45], and the amount of ash
being released is less than in the 1970s  perhaps 10 to (at most) 100
times less. Consequently, running the same model, the impacts would be much
less and thus the effects of nuclear power would be far more significant;
albeit, again because of the change in standards, not directly proportional to
the reduction in ash emissions because of the lowering of some nuclear power
emissions over the same period.

In 1988, Britain's National Radiological Protection Board carried out a
study[46] of the radiological impacts of the emissions
from the coal-fired Didcot power station, in Oxfordshire. Their analysis
suggested that the most exposed individual would receive a dose of 0.5μSv
(micro-Sieverts) per year  that's 0.02% of the average annual
2,600μSv radiation dose in Britain from all sources. A subsequent and
more
detailed study[47] by the NRPB put the dose at
between 5μSv for the most exposed individual and 0.1μSv for the
average person (0.2% to 0.004% of the annual dose). More recently there was
concern that as the coal burnt in power stations no longer came from the UK
there might be a difference in the impact. In 2006 the Health Protection Agency
carried out a study on the use of fuel ash as a building material. Their
conclusion[48] was that 

"it is considered unlikely that there is a significant
increase in the radiological hazard from the use of [pulverised ash] in
building materials."

Note that these results are also in agreement with the findings by the US
Geological Survey which were also quoted in the Scientific American article
from which George quotes. The article itself qualifies the risks by stating


Dana Christensen, associate lab director for energy and
engineering at ORNL, says that health risks from radiation in coal by-products
are low. "Other risks like being hit by lightning," he adds,
"are three or four times greater than radiation-induced health effects
from coal plants."

Clearly the figure that George quotes  "100 times"  is
a distortion of the findings of the original research paper; it is also a
misrepresentation of the various research studies that have been conducted
since the 1970s. The difference between the radiological impacts of
coal-burning and nuclear power are nowhere near as great and, with intervening
changes, are likely to be less today. In any case, the study at the heart of
this debate showed that whilst the impacts of coal are greater for some
effects, the impacts of nuclear were, and for the thyroid always, greater. I
think that in light of this George might like to reassess his use of this
argument.

In probabilistic terms the likelihood that humans are causing climate change
(greater than 90%[31]) is much greater than the
chances of being struck by lightening. However, the role of coal in the process
of driving climate change is only one of a number of contributory
factors, not a controlling factor. We could eliminate all coal use tomorrow and
the results wouldn't be significantly different in a century if we did not
change those other factors too.

George doesn't deal with the precise impacts of the
radiation from nuclear power on health  other than the comparison with
coal emissions. Therefore I won't go into any detail about the issue of
nuclear power and health as he did not directly consider this in his article.
However, to answer a statement in the article about environmentalism's
treatment of radiation and health, there is one area we must focus upon. Over
the last few years there has been a debate about the scientific basis on which
the risks of radiation upon health are assessed, and the implications of this
redefine the reignited debate over nuclear power.

In his article George states, in relation to the Fukushima accident


Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose
of radiation.

That of course could be interpreted as an acute dose of radiation, which
could kill within days, but what about the longer term mortality of chronic
radiation exposure? Is this a statement that the radioactive releases from the
site are not significant enough to cause any deleterious effects on
life?

The consensus view on radiation and health is largely informed by studies of
the survivors of the atomic bombs in Japan and the military personnel involved
in bomb testing in the 1950s and 1960s. These represent very short, acute doses
of radiation on the body. In contrast the effects of low-level, chronic
exposure to radiation are very different. Recent research suggests that the
dose models used to assess the impact of radioactive discharges are wrong
because they can't approximate the impact of such long-term
exposures[49]. For example, the damage
from long-term, chronic radiation exposure can slowly accumulate within DNA,
and so be passed to future generations. What's most important is the difference
between largely external radiation doses, and the internal dose
from materials that have been ingested  so called, internal
emitters. Where this debate is most contentious, and has the greatest
relevance to the Fukushima accident, is in relation to the impacts of the
Chernobyl fire.

Obviously there are threats from the nuclear power station,
but they are limited and they are quantifiable. It's not a Chernobyl. Though
the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl was a terrible event for many people, the
lasting effects were nothing like as bad as expected.

Whilst the causative mechanisms of the accidents are very different, the
data released thus far by the International Atomic Energy Agency[52] (IAEA) paints a rather different picture (see the
Fukushima Accident box below). The official, IAEA
view point of view on the Chernobyl accident[62] is that 

...the possible increase in cancer mortality due to this
radiation exposure might be up to a few per cent. This might eventually
represent up to four thousand fatal cancers in addition to the approximately
100 000 fatal cancers to be expected due to all other causes in this
population. Among the 5 million persons residing in other ‘contaminated’ areas,
the doses are much lower and any projected increases are more speculative, but
are expected to make a difference of less than one per cent in cancer
mortality.

The Fukushima Accident

According to George's article 

Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest
of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small. The
crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power.

Perhaps it would have been wiser to wait and see what the outcome of a
developing situation was before passing a judgement upon it. The evidence for
the impacts of the partial meltdown has only come to light in the days since he
made this point on the BBC's Daily Politics programme last week.

Chernobyl was a serious accident because the reactor was operating near to
full power, with the control rods withdrawn, when the explosion took place. As
a result there were no safety measures in operation to limit the nuclear chain
reaction. At Fukushima Daiichi, the reactors
tripped[53] the moment the earthquake was
detected; this cut heat
production[54] to less than 10%, and after
3-4 hours the heat might only be 1% of the reactor's design load. Three of the
damaged reactors have a generating capacity of 784 mega-Watts, meaning the
thermal load will be around 2 giga-Watts. After a few days the heat being
produced is likely to be around 5 to 10 mega-Watts  still enough to
gradually cause the fuel in the core to heat up, extending the duration of the
accident whilst permanent cooling cannot be maintained.

Perhaps the greater problem are the spent fuel rods housed in ponds on the
site. The reactors house the nuclear fuel in a strong concrete and steel casing
 the primary containment. In contrast, the spent fuel taken from the
reactor has to be cooled for a number of months in ponds of
water[55], to allow the level of heat
production to fall to a point where they are safe to be transported off-site.
During this time they have to be kept under water, to both cool them and reduce
the amount of radiation entering the environment. The cooling water must itself
be cooled or, just like a kettle, it will boil away to expose the spent fuel
 and compared to the reactor's primary containment the fuel ponds have a
minimal barrier between the fuel and the environment. If the cooling water
heats and boils away, the spent fuel itself can heat up, rupturing the casing
of the fuel rods and releasing their intensely radioactive load into the
environment.

Initial reports indicate the the company operating the site, Tepco, had lax
controls over spent
fuel handling[56] and consequently there may
have been a build-up of spent fuel in the ponds on the site  worsening
the radioactive release after the power to the cooling pumps was lost.

The New Scientist, six days after the earthquake and tsunami that initiated the
accident, stated that "Fukushima
Daiichi won't be another Chernobyl"[57].
George Monbiot may have been echoing these comments in
his article. Whilst the causative mechanisms of the accident are distinct
compared to Chernobyl, the loss of primary cooling and the radioactive release
this initiated are disturbingly familiar. During this week the IAEA have been
releasing beta-gamma radiation measurements from around the area as part of
their daily reporting. Taking the reports from day before, on and after
George's article:

21st
March[58]  High levels of beta-gamma
contamination have been measured between 16-58 km from the plant... results
show contamination ranging from 0.2-0.9 MBq per square metre;

At the moment this contamination will be a mixture of short-lived
radionuclides, such as iodine, and longer-live ones, such as caesium; as yet
there is no data on the composition of the contamination so its difficult to
say what the level will be in a month or so, or in the longer-term. Compare
these levels to the caesium contamination around the Chernobyl site  as
shown in the map on the right (a larger, less detailed map is available from
the EU
Greens report on Chernobyl[61]). 0.9MBq per
square metre is comparable to the readings well inside the Chernobyl exclusion
zone; not as high as the highest levels immediately around the site, but it
approaches those level of contamination. So, at this early stage, whilst
the mode of the accident at may not be the same as Chernobyl, the radiological
impacts of the accident may be approaching similar
levels.

This determination is based on existing models of radiation and health,
reflecting the acute doses of radiation from atomic bombs rather than chronic,
longer-term exposure. However, more recent research on the effects of low-level
radiation on health throws the established view on radiation impacts into
doubt. For example, in the years after Chernobyl: there was a sharp change in
neo-natal
mortality rate in Germany[63] which
coincided with the Chernobyl accident; other studies suggest that the exposure
of unborn children to radiation may have also caused a change
in leukaemia rate in the US[64]; and more
recently, changes in cancer rates in north Sweden suggest a correlation
to Chernobyl fallout in the region[65].
What's important about these findings is that, because the existing dose models
can't explain them, there must be another causal mechanism at work  one
that cannot be explained within the existing approach to radiation exposure and
health risk.

This goes some way to explain why, whilst the IAEA put the excess deaths
from Chernobyl at around 4,000, other research quotes higher levels. For
example, a recent volume of academic research, published in the Annals of
the New York Academy of Sciences (note, clearly not the most radical
band of environmental activists), and reviewing the evidence of over 5,000
research papers on the impacts of the Chernobyl accident, puts the figure at
985,000 excess deaths[66].

The most important feature of recent research into radiation and health is
the role of the internal emitters  radiation taken into the body,
either from natural or man-made sources. In 2001, the environment minister,
Michael Meacher, set up the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal
Emitters (CERRIE) to review the health risks from internal emitters. The
purpose of the committee was to look at the reasons why disagreements over the
impacts of low-level radiation upon health existed, and to contrast the science
behind these different viewpoints in order to suggest "what we know",
and thus how government might proceed in the future.

Right from the start CERRIE experienced difficulties because  as this
issue is so significant for the nuclear industry as well as for many aspects of
public policy  the workings of the committee were politicised; not least
when Michael Meacher left his post and a less sympathetic minister, Elliot
Morley, took over. What followed was tragic farce, with committee members
receiving legal
threats from government lawyers[67] to prevent
the inclusion of certain evidence in the final report. In the end, whilst the
committee chairman issued
a report[68], the alternative viewpoint on
the validity of radiation dose models had to be issued as an independent
"minority report"[69]. Evidence was presented
to the committee to suggest that present radiation dose models, which are set
by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), could
underestimate the risks by a factor of 300 or more[70].
Unfortunately, the politicisation of the committee's work meant that this
information could not be properly investigated.

In his article George states 

Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive
pollution.

That echoes Stewart Brand's viewpoint in Whole Earth Discipline


Fear of radiation is far more important health threat than
radiation itself.

Unfortunately, as noted earlier, the problem is that the way these arguments
are discussed in public does not address itself to the available evidence, but
rather to the personalities involved. What this descends into is a battle
between pitched camps who trade opinions rather than trading blows, with the
public in the middle  essentially its the politics of the school-yard
expressed within a tit-for-tat "my expert's bigger than your expert"
dialogue.

Science is not the preservation of a particularly acceptable
"truth" against all contrary speculation; what it seeks to do is
match demonstrable theory to the mechanisms we see taking place in the
environment. Consequently the scientific process is not about seeking to
maintain the dogmatic primacy of certain facts over others, but to demonstrate
the validity of our knowledge by showing that it correlates to the events
taking place within the natural world around us. That process breaks down when
existing theories fail to explain events, but a revision of the consensus view
is blocked because it has such significant political or social implications
 the CERRIE review being but one example. As a result we not only degrade
the validity of science, we also risk perpetuating damaging ideas or practices
because, irrationally, the impacts of the need to change our views are
considered unacceptable.

That said, it is perhaps significant that in 2009 the head of the
International Committee on Radiological Protection's scientific
secretariat[71] (the notional
"keepers" of the accepted radiation dose model), Dr Jack Valentin,
resigned his post; he stated that the ICRP's risk model could not be employed
to predict or explain the health effects of radiation exposures to human
populations. This was because the uncertainties for internal exposures were too
great, perhaps by two
orders of magnitude[72]. If true, this would
endorse the minority case within the CERRIE committee. On that note, perhaps we
should also consider the words of the administrator, Marion Hill, who resigned
from CERRIE  and, whilst not "an environmentalist", stated
to the Sunday Times[67] that 

It’s a complete failure when you have a scientific committee
that is not allowed to write anything about disagreements over science.

Logically, if low levels of radioactive contamination are significant to
health then all such emissions of low level radioactivity are
significant; that includes coal as well as nuclear power. However, the reason
this is such a political issue is that, if the alternative dose models
suggested by research into low level radiation are enacted, it's the end of the
nuclear power industry. In turn, if the nuclear power industry shuts down then
the military use of nuclear materials and atomic weapons will become
prohibitively expensive  because of the cross-subsidisation of
military nuclear systems through the funding of university training for
nuclear/radiation physics, and research and development by the civil
engineering industry for civil nuclear facilities. That, of course, would
upset the present global balance of power; but, in any case, that's what the
existence of the civil nuclear power industry helps to support through its
everyday activities.

Nuclear power is not a "carbon free" source
of electricity; and for nuclear power generally the carbon issue is related
directly to the quality of uranium resources. In fact, due to the reliance
of all human processes upon fossil fuels, even the greenest solar panel, the
cutest water turbine or the most elegant wind turbine all, to some
extent, embody a certain amount of carbon as part of their production and,
in most cases, operation.

First of all, let's look at the resource argument from the coal point of
view. There's a lot of coal around, so we are told. In fact, Stewart Brand, in
Whole Earth Discipline, states 

The problem is not that nuclear is expensive. The problem is
that coal is cheap.

When the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change project
future carbon emissions they take values for the amount of coal, oil and gas
that the International energy Agency or the World Energy Council say exist and
then factor out what that means for emissions; but, what if those resources
didn't, in geological or economic terms, "exist"? If the quantities
of fossil fuels available are smaller, the level of carbon emissions would be
lower, which would hopefully mean that  excepting the dire consequence
that we trigger
feedback loops[73] within the climate system
 the effect on temperatures would be lower too. We could of course try to
use clean coal or carbon capture systems to ameliorate the effect of burning
coal; but in a way I believe that the fall-back to supporting nuclear is an
unspoken acceptance by the industrial establishment, and by leading
environmentalists, that these ideas just won't
work effectively or economically[74].

Rather like the issue with radiation dose models, there is evidence that not
just the amount of coal, but also the amount of oil, that is producible is
restricted  and so existing reserve estimates are exaggerating future
energy supply. For example, a recent study by the US Geological Survey of the
Gillette
Coalfield in Wyoming[75], the USA's most productive
coalfield, found that only 6% of the coal resource there is viable to mine.
Rather like the politicised issue of the dose models,
the established view of energy resource economists, and their projections of
future energy sources, are being accepted as fact when there is a great deal of
evidence to suggest that these figures are wrong.

The first and foremost conclusion from this investigation is
that data quality of coal reserves and resources is poor, both on global and
national levels. But there is no objective way to determine how reliable the
available data actually are.

However, after looking at the history of production trends their conclusion
was that 

Global coal production to peak around 2025 at 30% above
present production in the best case

Rather like the debate around the issue of peak
oil[78], the debate on peak
coal[79] generates opposition from many vested
interests  even from those who oppose the use of fossil fuels because,
they believe, if resources are limited it might negate the impetus to take
action sooner rather than later. However, the issue is more complex, since
energy supply is implicitly related to economic growth. Also, this isn't just
an issue of peaking production, but also the changing quality of resources. For
example (see figure A5 of Annex 3 of EWG's report) in the USA, Poland and
Brazil, whilst more coal is being dug, the actual level of energy delivered is
falling because the quality of the coal produced is dropping, and this off-sets
the increase in production. Of course, this would appear to strengthen the
position of nuclear power, but in fact the problem of supply and falling
quality is an even more pressing issue with uranium supplies.

Let's assume that we can develop a "nuclear renaissance"; we build
many more nuclear power stations. That will reduce carbon emissions, but it
will also drive up the demand for nuclear fuel, and thus uranium ore. In 1999
the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (or OECD 
again, not exactly radical environmentalists) published a volume of
research on future
energy trends[80]. On the nuclear renaissance
issue the report stated 

If nuclear power were to become a major component... then the
number of nuclear power plants would need to increase 30 times, leading to a
total of 12 000 plants. With an estimated life expectancy of forty years for
every plant, each year 300 plants would have to be replaced in order to keep
production capacity constant. Known uranium reserves would then last only for
about a decade...

The problem is that the energy economics of nuclear are dominated by the
high costs of construction and waste disposal; even though the plant may
produce a lot of power from very little fuel, in terms of the energy
return on energy invested[81] (EROEI)
nuclear isn't as good as other conventional
or renewable energy sources[82]. More
problematically, as noted in the previous quote, as new nuclear plants demand
more uranium the depletion of resources will, as with oil today, force the
mining industry to use lower quality sources. That doesn't just reduce the
energy return; there is a point at which nuclear power will produce no energy
return, and we might get to that point quickly if many states expand nuclear
energy production. As outlined in a report by the Oxford
Research Group[83] 

The quantity of energy that can be generated from one kg of
natural uranium has a fixed value. The energy needed to recover the uranium
from the rocks in the earth’s crust increases with decreasing ore grade. At a
certain grade the extraction energy equals the gross energy produced in the
reactor. Using ore at that critical grade (0.02% U3O8,
compared to an average today of 0.15%) the nuclear system as a whole produces
no net energy.

The Energy Watch Group also carried out a study
of future uranium resources[84], and they too found great problems
within both the way reserves are assessed, but more significantly how the ore
quality issue will affect production levels. Summarising the future outlook for
uranium supply, which they predict is likely to peak around 2030, they stated 

In the short term until 2012 the world nuclear capacity will
rather decline than increase due to ageing reactors and too few new reactors
under construction. In the long term beyond 2030 uranium shortages will limit
the expansion of nuclear power plants. However, even to meet the demand until
2030 the present uranium production capacities must be increased by at least
30%. Due to the delays in new projects and the severe problems at the new Cigar
Lake mine, the largest mine under development, probably these uranium supply
restrictions will limit the available nuclear capacity way before 2030.

It's one thing to advocate a few new nuclear power stations, but if you
follow-through on the logic of the carbon reduction argument then the number of
nuclear plants that would have to be built is far larger than I believe the
public, and many who currently support nuclear, anticipate. What really shifts
the balance is how "low" the "low carbon" technology of
nuclear really is. There are various studies of the carbon emissions from the
nuclear fuel cycle, and the impact that the changing quality of uranium ore has
on the levels of carbon produced (note that it isn't just the use of fossil
fuels that's the issue, uranium enrichment involves large quantities of
chemicals that are themselves greenhouse gases). One
of the better studies[85], undertaken for the
Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet of the Australian Government, was
produced by the Department of Integrated Sustainability Analysis at Sydney
University; this concluded that at present the carbon impact of nuclear
generated electricity was 60gCO2 equiv/kW-h.

If we look at carbon emissions just in the UK, the situation is rather
different to the graph of all fossil fuel emissions shown earlier. Britain
emitted 574.6MteCO2 (million tonnes of carbon dioxide) in 2009,
480.9MteCO2 from the use of fossil fuels. Britain's nuclear power
plants are going to be retired by 2035, so just to stand still in terms of
present carbon emissions we would need to build at least 9GW to 10GW of new
nuclear right away. That means the existing plans for a new nuclear build
won't reduce carbon emissions because they'll largely be replacing existing
nuclear plants, not substituting for coal or gas.

If we take the breakdown of carbon
emissions by fuel[86], and then the relative
amounts of the total fuel[87] used to produce
electricity[88], we find that
77.7MteCO2 were emitted from coal generation and
73.7MteCO2 from natural gas (we'll ignore oil as it's so small as to
be insignificant for this process). In other words, just over a quarter of
Britain's carbon emissions from the use of fossil fuels are the result of
electricity generation, and of that figure it's almost split half-and-half
between natural gas and coal-fired generation sources. Consequently, if
we're just targeting the coal, that's only going to address 14% of Britain's
total carbon emissions.

In 2009, Britain
generated[89] around 105TW-h
(tera-Watt-hours) of electricity from coal, 165TW-h from natural gas and
69.1TW-h from nuclear[88]; this was produced from
23.1GW (giga-Watt) of coal-fired plants, 27.9GW of gas-fired and 10.9GW of
nuclear generating capacity. Let's ignore the projected rise in electricity
demand; and we'll base the new build nuclear on the 1.6GW
nuclear plant[90] proposed for Hinkley
Point[91]. Each 1GW of nuclear power plant
capacity generates (at 80% capacity) 7TW-h, and produces, converting the value
for nuclear generation from the University of Sydney data,
0.06MteCO2/TW-h. Putting these myriad numbers together to express
our "options":

We do nothing to replace existing nuclear (saves
0.7MteCO2) and build 11GW of new gas capacity (costs
4.9MteCO2), so carbon emissions from fossil fuel use rise by
4.2MteCO2, roughly 1% of total UK carbon emissions;

To replace existing nuclear we build 7 new 1.6GW plants and
emissions do not change;

The media debate on nuclear assumes that the nuclear power stations produce
no carbon; the plant might not, but the fuel cycle does. Whilst nuclear saves
carbon, it can't eliminate it. If we look at official studies, such as the
IEA's World
Energy Outlook[92] when they considered
the need for reducing carbon from energy use in 2006, over all the various
measures they considered and the most likely scenario for their deployment,
nuclear produces the lowest savings in emissions. Also, to put these figures
for the rise or fall in emissions into perspective; from 2006, before the
economic crisis, until 2009, total British carbon emissions dropped
by nearly 12%![86]

Another issue with nuclear is that unlike coal or gas, where the fuel
make-up most of the cost of the system, with nuclear it's the up-front capital
costs of the plant that's significant. This means that changes in raw material
costs, such as those we've been experiencing for the last few years, can
quickly drive
up the cost[93] of the plant and the power it
produces. The existing plans for a new nuclear build in the UK could cost £6
billion per plant[94]. The greater issue for
the economy is that this £6 billion per plant doesn't just appear from
nowhere; through higher prices it will be extracted from the economy and that
will affect the performance of the economy in general.

The problem with the "swap this for that" approach is that we're
perpetuating existing unsustainable practices  as noted towards the
beginning of this paper, it's an appeal towards stasis rather than change. A
far more sensible approach would be to look at the problem from the demand side
(the use of energy) rather than the supply side (the source). For example, to
replace the coal and existing nuclear plants with new nuclear would cost
£132 billion; that's almost £1,900 per person (or £4,000 for the
average household) for everyone of Britain's projected 70 million population in
2030; the alternative options we could employ to use these funds would buy
significant levels of carbon reduction too.

To examine the alternatives we need to consider a rather geeky economic
concept called marginal
cost abatement[95]. The idea is to
look at the different options to reduce carbon, and how much they cost in terms
of the amounts of carbon
saved per unit of cost[96].
Then you rank them all from the lowest to the highest, and by starting with the
cheapest measures you are able to deliver savings in emissions more efficiently
than simply adopting a certain technology on a whim. Various studies for
marginal abatement costs have been produced recently, and most rank nuclear as
one of the more
expensive options[97]  above options such
as changing or improving agricultural land management or reforestation.

We are subliminally informed each day that economic
growth is the cornerstone of the modern world; that there is nothing which
cannot be solved if we can have enough growth: poverty, both here and in
the developing world; unemployment; environmental problems; peace and human
prosperity  irrespective of the deleterious consequences of our modern
society, we can solve them all with economic growth.

However, such a viewpoint has significant flaws. For example, in order to
grow the global economy in a manner which generates a "trickle-down"
of $1 of wealth for the poorest citizens of the world, you must create
$166 more for the richest[98]. All that we
achieve by viewing economic growth as the means by which we can solve human
problems is to further enrich a minority, marginalising the greater majority,
whilst at the same time we're depleting the stock of the Earth's resources.
Whether we like it or not the
human system cannot keep growing[99] because we're
just going to run out of "stuff". We're like hamster's on the treadmill
of growth  except that in real-life hamsters
know when to get off the wheel![100]

One of the most interesting aspects of George's article is the seeming
disdain that he has for "alternative" visions to the present
structure of industrial society. Reading through the whole piece, and stringing
together various sections (see quotes below), we could infer that he is
promoting the idea that only mainstream solutions, that accept the consumption
and affluence of society as they are today, are acceptable 

What they want, they tell me, is something quite different: we
should power down and produce our energy locally. Some have even called for the
abandonment of the grid. Their bucolic vision sounds lovely, until you read the
small print...

At high latitudes like ours, most small-scale ambient power
production is a dead loss. Generating solar power in the UK involves a
spectacular waste of scarce resources. It's hopelessly inefficient and poorly
matched to the pattern of demand...

Deep green energy production  decentralised, based on
the products of the land  is far more damaging to humanity than nuclear
meltdown...

That's an entirely valid commentary provided that the extant
structure of society today, highly energised and with high levels of resource
consumption, is sustainable; that there were mechanisms to keep our affluent
system ticking over, allowing the poorest around the globe to have these same
opportunities; and which would also solve the drivers of human unsustainability
and, ultimately, ecological collapse. Unless, even at a most general level,
this principle can be demonstrated, it's not possible to dismiss alternative,
lower consumption options to changing our world  purely because they hold
no interest for the political and business lobby; especially if, in fact, on a
rational evaluation of the material and energy flows concerned, such
"bucolic visions" were the only realistic options to support us in
the future.

What we find within this argument is something very similar to the approach
taken by Jonathon Porritt in his book, Capitalism as if the World
Matters[101], six years ago. He stated 

Incremental change is the name of the game, not
transformation...

And that, of course, means that the emerging solutions have to
be made to work within the embrace of capitalism. Like it or not, capitalism is
now the only economic game in town...

For fear, perhaps, of arriving at a different conclusion,
there is an unspoken (and largely untested) assumption that there need be no
fundamental contradiction between sustainable development and capitalism.

What this passage (and in some ways the entire book it is taken from) is
promoting is not a compromise, it's a rationalised accommodation with an
assumed and unproven set of scenarios about how our world operates  on
the grounds that this will produce a better outcome. What Jonathon Porritt
advocates is that we consciously disregard any questions, misgivings, or even
contradictory evidence in order to ensure that we can be "players"
rather than "by-standers" within the processes of politics and the
business world. Personally, I think this is analogous to handing a grenade to a
chimpanzee as a toy; we can assume that everything will be OK, and that's
entirely possible, but it's a highly questionable scenario that has a high
probability of an alternative, and rather serious, outcome.

I refer you back once again to the question I posed toward the beginning of
this paper: If it's a choice between power and influence but cow-towing to
conventional wisdom, or representing the best "truth" of our
situation but risking unpopularity, which should you choose? How we treat
the issue of ecological capacity; and how our choices relate to the evidence we
are able to demonstrate about our circumstances today; and, like it or not,
what practical realities this portends for our future development; hinge on
this moral issue  of either accepting the evidence for what it is, or
denying our capacity for rational judgement in order to fit in with the false
or delusional reality imposed by mainstream politics and economics.

At the simplest level we can illustrate the limits to human development by
projecting future demand against the known finite capacity of the planet to
meet those needs  a process refined by Professor William Rees and Mathis
Wackernagel in the 1990s to produce the concept of the "ecological
footprint"[102]. By combining
various impacts and the capacity of the environment to sustain them, we can
gauge the demands of the human ecosystem on the whole environment. For example,
the graph below shows the "number of Earths" required to support the
demands
of the human species[103]. The fact that we
are already in a serious deficit, as outlined earlier in relation to factors
like net primary productivity, is the reason that we have problems with climate
change, species loss and pollution. This approach has also been used, by groups
such as WWF, as a means of illustrating the impact of different nation states
on the global
environment[104].

Human ecological footprint andenvironmental carrying capacity

Source: Wackernagel et. al.

Thomas
Malthus[105] produced his Essay
on the Principle of Population[106] in
1798, and the way that it explained how populations change in response to their
environment inspired later scientists in their discoveries, especially Charles
Darwin and his work on the evolution of life. The core of Malthus' argument
related to the way in which the scale of change in population affects its food
supply 

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with
numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the
second.

A hundred and seventy years after Malthus' essay Paul
R. Ehrlich[107] resurrected the debate. His
book, The Population Bomb[108], predicted a
Malthusian
catastrophe[109] as the growth in the
human population outstripped the ability of the Earth to provide the resources
we require. For a variety of reasons the human apocalypse predicted by Ehrlich
did not take place, but the logic of Malthus and Ehrlich's arguments remain;
population is increasing exponentially, but the resources we require for
survival are not. At some point, if the population is not consciously checked,
the shortage of resources will impact our ability to sustain human society.
However, this is not just an issue of biology and population  whilst
humans have been ingenious in adapting their environment, we cannot escape the
thermodynamic restrictions that will eventually limit our growth.

Following on from the controversy created by Ehrlich's The Population
Bomb, members of The Club of
Rome[110] (a global think tank on
international issues) commissioned a scientific study of the trends that
Ehrlich and other highlighted. In 1972, Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows,
Jørgen Randers, and William Behrens published their research under the
title, The
Limits to Growth[111]. The group
developed a computer model that simulated, in a very simple way, the demands
that humans put on the environment as a result of population growth and greater
industrialisation. With the knowledge of the environmental limits that existed
at that time, the results of these impacts could be weighed against the
capacity of the environment in order to determine the likelihood of a
"Malthusian catastrophe". The conclusions of the report were, in
terms of the general exuberance about the Technological Revolution of that
time, rather stark[112] 

1. If the present growth trends in world population,
industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue
unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within
the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden
and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.

2. It is possible to alter these growth trends and to
establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable
far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that
the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person
has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential.

In 2004, the group published Limits to Growth  The 30-Year
Update[113]. This study included new information,
and a refined computer model, and the results proved to be broadly similar


Much that we wrote in Limits to Growth 30 years ago remains
true... The data, the computer, and our own experience tell us that the
possible paths into the future have narrowed since we first addressed limits to
growth in 1972.

In 2008, the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organization (CSIRO  again, not a bunch of radical
environmentalists!) published an independent, critical evaluation of the
Limits to Growth hypothesis, which
concluded[114] 

As shown, the observed historical data for 1970-2000 most
closely matches the simulated results of the LtG 'standard run' for almost all
outputs reported; this scenario results in a global collapse before the middle
of this century"... contemporary issues such as peak oil, climate change
and food and water security resonate strongly with the feedback dynamics of
'overshoot and collapse' displayed in the LtG standard scenario.

An illustration of the Limits toGrowth's World3 model
outputs

Source: Limits to Growth  The 30 Year
Update

By combining different impacts, and the ability of the environment to
sustain them, the Limits to Growth study projected the change in human
population, industrial output, food production, non-renewable resources and
pollution. An illustration of these results is shown on the right.

For the purposes of this discussion I've also added an indication of the
rise in global temperature predicted by the IPCC's Fourth
Assessment Report[31]. By adding temperature
to the Limits to Growth impacts we can understand something very important
about the impacts of population and resource depletion  well before
climate change becomes seriously problematic to the whole human species, the
effects of population and resource depletion are likely to have already caused
a disruption in the operation of human system (which, of course, the early
stages of climate change are likely to exacerbate).

The fact that serious effects other than climate change will impact
the human system before the climate heats-up is significant; the current
infatuation of environmentalism with climate represents a major flaw in their
reasoning of how we might solve environmental problems in general. By reducing
the bulk of our debate to one factor, climate, and avoiding any discussion of
the other aspects of human unsustainability and future instability, we skew the
debate on how we tackle these problems. For example, if you knew that you might
run short of resources within three decades, you definitely wouldn't, simply
to address carbon emissions, want to build lots of nuclear power stations
producing an intractable and hazardous waste stream!

Following the peak of oil and gas production human society will have
physically less energy each year to operate with. At the same time studies of
the depletion of other mineral resources highlight the middle of this century
as the time at which some essential metals will begin to experience
production difficulties[115]. Others,
relating the fact that the issues of population, energy production, food
production, water supply and climate change will all begin to have a serious
impact around the middle of this century, instead talk of a
"spike"[116] in the human system. Although not
directly based upon the Limits to Growth study, these other investigations
broadly mirror its findings. As a result some commentators, looking back at the
history of this debate, talk of Ehrlich, and even Malthus, being 'vindicated'[117] by the emerging body of evidence
on the fate of humanity over the coming century.

Perhaps, within the framework that George intimates is required to create
change (such as supporting new nuclear), we might view all this talk of
"limits" and "collapse" as just the ranting of
"radical geenies". Possibly; but then you might have also read Jeremy
Warner's column (reporting on HSBC's recent global commodities conference) for
The
Telegraph On-line this week[118] 

The big picture is that with an additional one billion cars on
the road, demand for oil would grow 110pc... Total demand for energy would rise
by a similar order of magnitude... It scarcely needs saying that regardless of
the environmental consequences, energy industries would struggle to cope, and
more likely would find it impossible. We may or may not already be perilously
close to peak oil  or maximum productive capacity  but nobody
believes the industry could produce double what it does at the moment... We are
fast approaching an era when energy will have to be rationed. This can either
be done in a peaceful manner, or we can carry on as we are, in which case it is
all too likely to end up being settled down the barrel of a gun.

Well, OK; so journalist's might get a little bit extreme at times in order
to grab the headline. However, there's no possible way that rational and
measured organisations, for example the US National Intelligence Council, would
upset the apple cart by issuing
a report[119] highlighting the relationship
between energy, food, water and climate change, and the problems that are
likely to arise over the next few decades... is there? 

Resource issues will gain prominence on the international
agenda. Unprecedented global economic growth  positive in so many other
regards  will continue to put pressure on a number of highly strategic
resources, including energy, food, and water, and demand is projected to
outstrip easily available supplies over the next decade or so...

The World Bank estimates that demand for food will rise by 50
percent by 2030, as a result of growing world population, rising affluence, and
the shift to Western dietary preferences by a larger middle class. Lack of
access to stable supplies of water is reaching critical proportions,
particularly for agricultural purposes, and the problem will worsen because of
rapid urbanization worldwide and the roughly 1.2 billion persons to be added
over the next 20 years. Today, experts consider 21 countries, with a combined
population of about 600 million, to be either cropland or freshwater scarce.
Owing to continuing population growth, 36 countries, with about 1.4 billion
people, are projected to fall into this category by 2025.

OK, obviously we've got some problems, and no amount of nuclear power can
help; in fact, arguably significantly extending nuclear power from its existing
levels might actually exacerbate the problem: partly as a result of the waste
issue; partly because it's a potential source of materials for nuclear weapons;
but principally because, if the world does undergo a long-term economic
contraction, states might be tempted to continue operation of the plants even
though they might not have the necessary resources to maintain them safely.

Flick back and take a look at the graphs of global carbon emissions; notice
those little saw-teeth in the data? Every now and then the production of carbon
dips and then recovers. Now look at the graph of the human ecological footprint
 again, wiggles in the data, showing periods where the ecological
footprint situation improved, and then returned to its previous trend. Also,
remember the statistic earlier  the fact that between 2006 and 2009,
over the economic crisis, Britain's carbon emissions shrank by 12%.

Do you really want to solve the climate crisis, George? If
you were not already aware[120], there's a simple
trend we can from within the data... economic contraction works!
Earlier I stated that, in relation to George's rejection of the "deep
green" message on energy, "That's an entirely valid commentary
provided that the extant nature of society today, highly energised and with
high levels of resource consumption, is sustainable". If we look at
various sources of information cited in this paper, the answer to that question
is that clearly that the present form of our human society is not
sustainable.

If no one, honestly and clearly, tells the public the demonstrable facts of
our situation, whether they like it or not, but instead we market or promote
solutions within the existing paradigm that do not really address the problems
before us, what possibility of realistic change is there? That of course leads
us to a perhaps flippant, although entirely valid, question; "Do you
want to experience a dire economic collapse where everything in your life
ceases to be predictable, or are you willing to accept less?".

I'm looking for a way to bring this little exploration
of human ecology to an end; some thought or idea to sum it all up in one
all-encompassing statement that can simultaneously unite and juxtapose all the
elements I've explored... I must say, I've been stuck on this, but then I
had a feeling, an inspiration, and went to my book wall to find my favourite
Marcuse[121] 

The power over man which this society has acquired is daily
absolved by its efficacy and productiveness. If it assimilates everything it
touches, if it absorbs the opposition, if it plays with the contradiction, it
demonstrates its cultural superiority. And in the same way the destruction of
resources and the proliferation of waste demonstrate its opulence and the
"high levels of well-being".

I'm really sorry, but at some level I can't help feeling that, rather like
the famed Borg[122]
of the Star Trek series, George has
been "assimilated" by the misinformation of the nuclear-industrial
lobby; add to that Stewart Brand, Mark Lynas and others of their ilk. Faced
with the dilemma between representing a hard, unpopular truth; or, like
Jonathon Porritt, trying to make some perhaps positive but ultimately futile
steps (in terms of the ecological trends and where they are heading) towards
accomplishing some change  they have decided not to stand for an
interpretation of the data that makes the best sense because it represents such
a challenge to existing political orthodoxy. Whether the facts be popular or
not, we must bring closure to the suicide cult that is the neoliberal
political-economic system.

Of course, as we've seen this week, George's article has created rather a
clamour; and that, if nothing else, is really what I believe the nuclear lobby
wish to do. It's not so much that George's efforts make any different to the
bulk of the population; but amongst the environment lobby, the people who are
likely to make trouble in the next few years as EDF and others apply to build
new nuclear plants, it creates doubt and division  and that, more than
anything, is what vested interests seek to create today.

Doubt is a powerful psychological mechanism not just because it obstructs
certain actions; it also allows people to consciously trade-off the
continuation of a certain course of action today because there is no clear
evidence that change is required tomorrow  especially if acting on the
information requires difficult lifestyle changes. The use of doubt as a means
to obstruct action was highlighted in documents disclosed as part of legal
actions against the tobacco
industry[123] 

Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing
with the "body of fact" that exists in the mind of the general
public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy... If we are
successful in establishing a controversy at the public level, then there is an
opportunity to put across the real facts about smoking and health... If in our
pro-cigarette efforts we stick to well documented fact, we can dominate a
controversy and operate with the confidence of justifiable self-interest.

Remember what I said at the beginning about campaign groups not using
knowledge-based tactics as part of their work any more? Contrast this to the
tobacco industry's chosen method of attack; having control over the facts to
frame events, rather then simply appealing to altruism or conscience, is the
way to control the overall perception of the debate.

Today we see the same mechanisms at work, from climate change denialists to
the machinations of lobbyists and public relations agencies in the media[124]. When it comes to critical economic questions the
stakes are even higher; not only are the potential changes to our lifestyles
much greater, but political leaders around the globe have promised us
"more", and have justified the difficult changes required under
neoliberal economic policy because the promised results would be "better
for everyone".

As noted in the quote from the tobacco industry above, by creating a
controversy in the media the public are presented with two, seemingly
contradictory points of view  and this dissonance is the basis upon which
those seeking to obfuscate an open presentation of the evidence can play upon.
Whilst those with certain interests may take sides, the majority of the public
will be unsure which view of "reality" to believe. That, ultimately,
is the greatest benefit to the pro-nuclear lobby from George's change of mind
on nuclear power.

What's important is that we seek to "understand" the complexity
and inherent inter-relatedness of these problems, rather than just
"knowing"; it is only by understanding that can we realise the
pressing need for change. There is a general, driving trend behind this
argument, and one that's presenting itself today in many, varied ways 
from high food prices to unpredictable traffic jams. If we continue without
significant change, human society cannot continue to operate in its present
form because the principle trend that supports it  economic growth 
cannot function reliably due to the finite limits of energy and resource
production.

Oh yes, and the most important point  this change is
inevitable. That's because the root of these problems are not related to
technological, social or political factors that operate within
human ecology; they originate from outside human ecology (and
thus, influence), and are primarily related to the universal thermodynamic
principles that operate across the natural world. For this reason we will have
to manage the ecological
overshoot[125] of our species, one way or
another, and whether we wish to or not, at least until such a time that we can
sustainably
reconcile[126] the demands of the human
species with the ability of the Earth to support them.

That's not to say that "modern" society would come to an end; as
T.S.
Eliot said[127], "What we call the
beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning... The
end is where we start from". The mechanisms that enable modern society
to function depend directly on our growing use of finite energy and mineral
resources. It's not that we're "running out" of these finite
resources, it's that production of certain essential resources will reach a
peak
and then decline[128] over the course of this
century. We will not be forced to return to some pre-industrial past 
as those who seek to obfuscate or deride this discussion usually claim;
but it does mean that we cannot continue to live in a way that  within
the aspirations of the Western world which are depicted through the mass media
today  most people consider to represent "normality".

So, to conclude: As I assess the facts about carbon emissions, or
environmental degradation in general, coal is being made into a scapegoat by
many environmentalists; and of course, the reason that you need a scapegoat is
to deflect criticism from the less palatable reality of where the blame truly
lies... the way human society in general operates today.

The popularised, media-led message of environmentalists might seek to
demonise coal but, as outlined earlier, Britain's coal consumption does not
inflict a significantly worse impact upon the environment than many other
aspects of our modern culture. Environmentalists might obsess about climate and
carbon, but the fact is that resource use, ecological damage, the growth of
human population, and more importantly the growth in human affluence, are what
is driving the present crisis of human ecology. And whilst certain leading
environmentalists might try and qualify their support for certain mainstream
technological or political solutions to these problems, ultimately it's the
economic process that demands their adoption in order to continue the trend of
expansion  and it is this that's truly driving the processes of
degradation and depletion.

Given the evidence, it's possible to see how, as Marcuse outlines, the
"system" is seeking to nullify the critical and prescient critique
that environmentalism continues to present to the modern economic process. To
refute or ridicule the "deep green" philosophy that created many
aspects of modern environmentalism  and which, from bushcraft to
permaculture, still nourishes its vision today  will not change the
outcome of the processes that are taking place around us. Some might say that
within modern society, "we
have a greed with which we have agreed"[129];
I, and many others, not just from an environmental perspective but also for
spiritual
or social motivations[130], would beg to
differ. This is a problem that cannot be solved by different methods of
producing "more"; we must instead adapt to "less".

As shown in the graphs on carbon emissions earlier, the fact that high
levels of energy and resource consumption are a relatively recent phenomenon
means that our society can exist without the mass consumption that we
are told is essential to our well-being today. Nuclear power can't even begin
to address these problems  we need the opposite kind of measure,
we need
contraction[131].

Again, trying to think of a descriptive phraseology within which to capture
this idea, one of the foundational truths of an ecological perspective was
expressed most succinctly by John Seymour, in his book, The Ultimate
Heresy[132] 

When you come finally to accept the belief that Man is a part of Nature you
have completely to overhaul every one of your previous ideas about what it is
right to do.

As individual environmentalists we are called upon to witness the world as
we experience it, and to share that insight with others; there should be no
expectation that we represent "the facts"  such evidence,
freely available, should stand for itself without any nuancing of its content.
Of course, taking such a view can be challenging for many people; unpredictable
change is so much harder to think about than than a reassuringly predictable
and reliable stasis. Environmental philosophy challenges us to understand and
solve this dichotomy. The question we have to resolve is a value judgement over
which is the best option for us to adopt: Is it better to serve under an order
that is delusional (in the face of the evidence, perhaps suicidally so), and by
taking no action risking that if it collapses your lifestyle will be seriously
compromised; or, by accepting the need for change, risking the seeming chaos of
trying to adapt your lifestyle to escape that outcome?

The solutions to the problems that the human species is experiencing today
are bound within the broad philosophy that environmentalism has held since its
beginnings. Not just in the 1960s or 1970s, but in the decades and centuries
before; within the writings of Thoreau[133], or the Diggers[134], and before them many of the world's
great religions and ancient philosophers  who saw that simplicity, and
concentrating on the small human-scale systems that we are able to relate to
and thus maintain, was a means to achieve personal satisfaction. In a similar
manner, we should, interdependently with those around us, seek an understanding
of the minimum and sufficient resources that we need for life, and how we may
best attain that... and I find nothing in the advocacy of nuclear power,
certainly when set in contrast to the very real problems we face today, that in
any way fulfils such a purpose.

Finally then, a description of our predicament that expresses the testing,
and sometimes paradoxical, relationship between the pressures of our modern
existence, and the inner perceptions that stir our yearning for a more
"civilised" way of living[135] 

We live in a dream world. With a small, rational part of the
brain, we recognise that our existence is governed by material realities, and
that, as those realities change, so will our lives. But underlying this
awareness is the deep semi-consciousness that absorbs the moment in which we
live, then generalises it, projecting our future lives as repeated instances of
the present. This, not the superficial world of our reason, is our true
reality. All that separates us from the indigenous people of Australia is that
they recognise this and we do not.

page 210, Chernobyl: Consequences of the
Catastrophe for People and the Environment, Alexey V. Yablokov, Vassily B.
Nesterenko and Alexey V. Nesterenko, Annals of the New york Academy of Sciences,
vol.1181, 2009. ISBN 9781-5733-1757-3 (paperback). £85.

A Comparison of the Limits to
Growth with Thirty Years of Reality, Graham Turner, SEED Working
Paper 19, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
(CSIRO, Australia), June 2008 
http://www.fraw.org.uk/f.html?csiro2008

Chapter 7, On Borrowed Time?:
Assessing the Threat of Mineral Depletion, Professor John E. Tilton,
RFF Press, 2003. ISBN 9781-8918-5357-9 (paperback), £14.50.
For an on-line discussion of technology and resource limits, see my
recent research and presentation, The Limits to Technology 
http://www.fraw.org.uk/workshops/limits_to_technology/index.shtml